TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
No bio...
User ID: 616
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
10mo ago
During the conversation on X between Musk and Trump, they floated the idea of Musk leading a 'government cutting commission' or basically a setup where Musk would come in and cut the fat from the government.
This idea fascinates me, and while I'm sure there are all sorts of reasons it may be terrible, I fear that financially the U.S. may need to do something dramatic like this in order to get the debt under control, etc etc. Also I, along with many other mottizens, am just pretty bearish on the efficacy of most government. Especially federal officials.
The question for me is - how would this work? Which areas do you think would get cut the most? (education was mentioned here specifically) Which areas are critical and should remain mostly untouched? (post office?)
On top of that, if this were to happen, what would be the primary blockers? Do you think Elon is the right man for the job without political connections? Are there ways in which the President can be prevented from firing large swathes of the federal admin? Potential disasters that could happen if critical employees are in fact fired?
Yeah it's pretty bad. I'm fairly involved with EA and while I knew SBF was a big donor, I had no idea how bad the hero worship had gotten. Both among EA and big financial institutions. To my eyes this reflects even more poorly on VC funders and high finance/trading in general, they were supposed to have done due diligence on FTX (which presumably they did and the whole using $10b in customer funds came later) but they didn't see this coming either.
For instance look at this archived profile on SBF from Sequoia, a VC fund that made FTX happen and memoryholed this article after the disaster. The hero worship in there is cringey, and in retrospect it's horrifying:
In devoting every waking moment of his life to work, SBF doesn’t feel he’s doing anything unusual or extraordinary. He’s doing what he feels every right-minded person should do—if they were big-hearted and clear-headed. He’s attempting to maximize the amount of good in the world.... SBF, on the other hand, seems qualitatively different: He seems utterly driven, as if by a lash.
and
It’s hard to see SBF in a clear light. The glitter of the self-made billions are blinding. His intellect is as awesome as it is intimidating.
and
“It’s not some pathological thing,” he continues. “For some bizarre reason—and I don’t get it—they want to help.” We’re talking about EAs in general, but also about SBF in particular. “They want to make a difference, and they want to devote their lives to doing that,” says Lerner, who is definitely not an EA. “But that still doesn’t clarify why, or if, that somehow diminishes the pleasure drive.” SBF is a mystery even to his own therapist.
it goes on
Yet again, I’m reminded of a certain novel. In Fitzgerald’s day, there was the real-life character of John Pierpont Morgan, who steered the nation as it made the transition from the 19th to the 20th centuries—the transition from an agricultural economy, powered by horses, to an industrial economy, run on rails. Who is going to do the same for us, in this new century?
Of course the answer to that last question is: SBF. The blatant pedestalizing of the man in here is inherently disgusting to me, the fact that it comes from a well-respected VC firm really lowers my faith in that entire class of folks. Especially after the WeWork Adam Neumann disaster and all the other disasters from startup founders.
Either way, I've been trying to beat the drum in EA spaces for a long time that EAs put far too much focus on credentials. It's ironic that so many folks in the movement will tell you to your face they don't care about credentials, only impact, and yet the entire leadership is nothing but blue-blooded Ivy League grads and other well-connected elites. It's a shame because I think most people in EA have their hearts in the right place, they just can't take off the credential blinders and see that most of the academic/elite class is specialized in bullshitting and not much else.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
3mo ago
This was one of the paragraphs I almost added in the initial thing. Tradesman is sort of an option. It's not as bad as coffee barista, but breaking six figure incomes seems pretty difficult.
On the ubiquitous internet advice to do this, after getting fired from my tech sales job I applied and worked as an electrician's apprentice for two months last year.
It was absolutely awful. Backbreaking work, in extreme heat. Digging ditches all day to run pipes and wires. Being in crawlspaces, just the worst. Long, loooong hours.
Also, all of the older men had horrible health, tons of injuries, were addicted to drugs and missing teeth, etc etc. The trades are not nearly as glamorous as they are made out to be online.
Looks like the war against advertising is continuing to fail, predictably. Google Chrome is now banning restricting ad blockers starting as early as next year. (1) I am not convinced this model of: create a free, ad-free service to get users --> slowly pull in ads for $$$ --> eventually become an ad-riddled hell is the best model. I often balk at paying for services up front, but if a service as essential as google is now bowing to the pressure, when will it end?
Advertising definitely has some uses in connecting buyers to sellers, and informing consumers about the market, but I'm convinced it's a bit of a 'tamed demon.' If we don't want to devolve into a horrid anarcho-capitalist future, we need to get serious about restricting what advertisers can do, and where they can advertise. I predict advertising will become far more ubiquitous with the rise of Dall-E and similar image producing AIs. The cost of creating extremely compelling, beautiful ads will plummet, and more and more of our daily visual space will become filled with non stop advertising.
On top of this, we have Meta and other tech oligarchs attempting to push us all into the Metaverse. I am no detractor of AR/VR, in fact I think utilized correctly it could solve many of our current problems. However if the Powers That Be take over the metaverse, we will soon have ads that engage all of our sense - not just vision and hearing.
Given how powerful advertising already is, can we really afford to let it run rampant in an age where we have such powerful technologies?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1mo ago
Absolutely! She actually has a section describing some of the arguments she's dealt with, and good Lord it sounds awful:
Imagine every time you started or ended a relationship, you had to establish every social norm from scratch.
Is it OK for partner to have sex with your best friend?
Is it OK to kiss somebody else in front of your partner?
What about them having sex in your bed when you're out of town?
Is it OK to have sex with another person then tell your partner the details?
Is your partner allowed to bring his lover to Christmas with your family? What about your kid’s birthdays?
If your partner’s lover is having a mental health breakdown, is it OK for your partner to go comfort her when it’s your day with him?
The list is endless, and so will your arguments about it.
I especially don't see how you can raise kids in a poly relationship, without having all sorts of humongous issues and problems. With both parents typically needing to work nowadays, having kids is already extremely demanding on a family's time. Add in other relationships on top of that, and it basically seems like a non-starter.
I agree with the net negative on society, for another reason though - polyamory being seen as even slightly social acceptable destabilizes every monogamous relationship. Now monogamous people have endless thoughts and temptations about "oh maybe we should be poly" which fractures and already crumbling marriage rate. It really is just... bad, in my view.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
3mo ago
Yeah this is just another piece in the endless stream of propaganda blaming all social ills on violent white boys and men. Not even very interesting or a new take.
Fails to have any nuance into the root of the problem it seems, basically just blaming the kid for being gullible enough to fall for evil propaganda. Boring.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
10mo ago
Does anybody else feel like the Motte is their internet home?
I go to other websites. I probably spend more time on them than here.
But the Motte just feels cozy to me. It's where I usually check first, and where I get most excited if I see a lot of activity. Something about this place pulls at my heartstrings.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
8mo ago
Okay wait, am I reading this right? Is 1 million times $20,000 actually TWENTY BILLION?
Good Lord, well I guess if you're going to give a naked bribe don't go small. But still. That is an INSANE amount of money to just casually throw out to a small part of the populace...
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
8mo ago
... and that this is in many ways a much worse thing. Public officials dealing with an emergency can't treat complaints like they're political conspiracy theories, not because such foul play is unimaginable -- I can give examples! -- but because the alternative is imaginable. Disasters are by definition the breakdown of normal systems, with lives on the line dependent on our ability to respond to those gaps.
Yeah I think this is my main issue. When the default response becomes "the other side is trying to smear us with insane conspiracies" then the government becomes basically immune to any criticism.
Extremely worrying development.
It's getting unavoidable - the quality of news and novel information obtained from time here is crashing. I used to hear things here first - now I usually don't hear them here at all.
It's getting unavoidable that we're having far more people complain and add low-effort negative comments than actually take time to flesh out top level posts that are high quality. As @Amadan and others have consistently said, if you don't like the status quo why don't you contribute yourself, or try to organize something else to change it?
High quality, intellectual writing doesn't just drop out of thin air because you complain about it. It comes from intelligent people who are driven to write, and who want to sharpen their minds in an environment that tests their opinions.
Frankly, I'm concerned that the "quality of news an novel information" has gone up here much more than I'd like. In terms of a vision for this site, I'm far more in the camp of having great writers like @ymeskhout and @DaseindustriesLtd write long effortposts about serious issues they've spent a lot of time thinking about, rather than helping people like you get their latest CW fix.
There are a million places on the internet you can go to keep up with the spectacle of the twenty four hour news cycle. There aren't as many places where you can find in-depth analyses of Straussian themes, or a discussion that weaves together modern internet drama with the age-old idea of sacrifice and meaning and suffering, or the how the relationship between the rich and the poor has changed dramatically in the modern era.
These sorts of well thought out, insightful and useful write-ups are rare and take time to formulate. Expecting brilliant insights on every latest piece of CW gossip is ridiculous. Sure it might drive more engagement, but it would also likely lead us in a race to the bottom.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2yr ago
The future of AI is likely decided this week with Sam Altman's Congressional testimony. What do you expect?
I expect nothing to happen for another few years, by which time it's too late. As @2rafa mentioned below, I'm convinced AI research and development is already far ahead of where it needs to be for AGI in the next couple of years. Given the US's embarrassing track record of trying to regulate social media companies, I highly doubt they'll pass an effective regulation regime.
What I would expect, if something gets rushed through, is for Altman and other big AI players to use this panic the doomers have generated as a way to create an artificially regulated competitive moat. Basically the big players are the ones who rushed in early, broke all the rules, then kicked the ladder down behind them. This is a highly unfortunate, but also highly likely future in my estimation.
It's ironic that we've entered into this age of large networks and systems, yet with the rise of AGI we may truly go back to the course of humanity being determined by the whims of a handful of leaders. I'm not sure I buy the FOOM-superintelligence arguments, but even GPT-4 optimized with plug-ins and website access will be a tsunami of change over the way we approach work. If there are more technical advancements in the next few years, who knows where we will end up.
What annoys me most is that this doomer rhetoric lets politicians act like they're doing something - stopping the AI companies from growing - when in reality they need to face the economic situation. Whether it's UBI, massive unemployment benefits, socialized housing, or whatever, our political class must face the massive economic change coming. At this rate it seems neither side of the aisle is willing to double down on the idea that AI will disrupt the workforce, instead they prefer to argue about the latest social issue du jour. This avoidance of the economic shocks coming in the next five years or less is deeply troubling in my view.
With SpaceX's Starship having finished it's static fire tests they will soon be gearing up for the first orbital launch. So far, space travel and industry have avoided getting polarized (although Musk has gotten some frankly ridiculous hit pieces for the whole Ukraine Starlink fiasco), but I don't expect this to continue as it gets cheaper and easier to sent things to and from space.
If you look at the cost per metric ton for space travel right now, it's around $11.3 million/ton. That means that if you want to get a ton of material into space, you're shelling out quite a bit. This limits space endeavours to major governments or multinational corporations for the most part.
According to Musk, Starship will be able to lower the cost to only $20,000 per metric ton to get into space. This is multiple orders of magnitude in terms of cost reduction. Now I'm not super optimistic this number will be hit anytime soon, but if it is, it will enter us into a new era when it comes to space and technology.
My question is - how does this play into the Culture War? Musk has been increasingly right-coded, but it also seems like space and 'moonshots' have long been a darling of the left. On top of this, there's a strong nationalist angle if we can get and maintain an edge on Russia/China in space industry.
I'm curious if anyone else has more fleshed out ideas on this topic, in terms of how space industry will affect the Culture War. Or do most of y'all think this is a non-starter and nobody will care about space in 5-10 years?
Not sure if folks here keep up with crypto much, but over the weekend FTX had a liquidity crisis and agreed to sell to Binance. This is pretty huge news - FTX was one of the bigger crypto exchanges known for buying out other flailing firms that had crises. This may lead to a larger spiral within the crypto economy. @aqouta curious for your take here.
Also as some folks here may know Sam Bankman-fried of FTX wealth is one of the three major funders of the Effective Altruism movement. Given the circumstances of this bailout, it's likely that FTX was sold for an incredibly small amount - if Binance didn't help them with the liquidity crisis they almost certainly would've fallen to $0 value. Unfortunately this means that the money EA has been pledged/receiving from SBF is going to dry up. I'm curious to see if the EA movement can weather this storm, as they have been rather aggressively growing and it looks like they've been betting on this funding being in place for a long time.
Time to add some wild speculation - Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, is Chinese. Now that Binance owns FTX, they are clearly the dominate player in the crypto space, or at least positioned well to become the dominant exchange. I wonder if this shift will cause China to reconsider their decision to make crypto illegal? Or is it too much of a risk to state power?
Update: This definitely seems like a coordinated attack. Apparently Coinbase released an article slamming FTX’s native token, then Binance pulled out their entire stake. Without those two events not sure if this would’ve happened.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2yr ago
Then I come here for a dose of sanity, and I have to dig DEEP into the replies before I find anyone positing the plainly obvious: that if you say your political opponents are child rapist election stealing perverts, some section of the population will actually believe the literal words you are saying and "take action".
This is a fair point, but I find the rest of your post pretty uncharitable. I see the recent right-wing explosion in crazy theories as a pretty understandable, if not reasonable, response to being totally destroyed culturally and shut out of important institutions by the left. With all of the recent censorship on social media sites etc., how can we as leftists expect right-wingers not to get radicalized into conspiracy theories?
I mean, if you look at the recent social media/alphabet agency collusion, the actual deep state was literally cooperating with social media companies to censor the public. That is what we know, of course the low-IQ crazies are going to believe even worse things.
It's a shame that a couple decades ago, this type of deep state critique would be firmly in the far-left camp. Leftists have been using this conspiratorial type of critique against the Western order for the better part of a century or more to radicalize their base, albeit usually with some more qualifiers and generally sane positions. Unfortunately, the right wing flipped the script on us, and weren't able to control the crazy side of the conspiratorial minded base.
If we have to blame someone, I blame leftists for allowing one of the best social movements in human history to be captured by milquetoast wokists and clear grifters. I'm not saying the right wing is innocent, but your post reads like blaming a dying bear for lashing out at its killers.
I just read a short article in an email newsletter that threw out this statistic with regards to automation in the food industry:
Between March and July 2022, an average of 760,000 people quit jobs in accommodation and food service
The article goes on to argue the point that due to all of the ‘quiet quitting’ and generally unsatisfied workers after the pandemic or over the last couple of years, automation will not be as big of a deal as we thought. I’ve seen this sentiment echoed a number of times recently where news outlets will talk about how all of the people worried about economic disruption from robotics and Artificial Intelligence don’t realize that it’ll actually be great because people hate working anyway.
I used to believe these claims when I was a disillusion young adult who hated working, but overtime I’ve gotten more and more skeptical. Many people I know take serious pride and work, and in fact for a lot of people their work is the most important thing in their life. I’m talking people who don’t even really need the money, or who claim that even if they had enough money to retire they would continue working just as much as they do now.
Is this recent trend of less engagement with work robust enough to offset the rise in automation of jobs? Is this just a cope from those who know their jobs will disappear soon? (Ie email newsletter writers)
Personally I’m surprised that artificial intelligence hasn’t gotten more flack than it has so far. I expected the lights to come out in full force and at least get some sort of ban on image generation (I know Getty or some other site has done this) but so far it seems that artificial intelligence is generally unopposed.
Any major salient examples of automation technology or artificial intelligence being banned to protect jobs?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
My point at this point, which I think is quite clear, is that ownership is essentially and definitionally the right to deprive others. That's it. I don't like that. In fact, I detest it with passion and rage. I hate it. So, I want an alternative.
You can detest it all you want, you still didn't answer @aqouta's question, which is what is your alternative?
There is a reason we have property, and why it's central to all human civilization. Provide literally any alternative and we can discuss, but you are just saying you hate it and then asking antagonistic questions here.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
3mo ago
Kudos to you for updating after seeing a particularly bad case of massaging the science for political outcomes. I also genuinely don't know how you reform academia and medicine when they are willing to be this blatantly political in their "science."
It's a shame because I love the Academy as an institution and an ideal, but it has become so corrupted it's shocking to me even on the 100th example. I hope for all our sakes we can find a way to save science without burning down too much.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
4mo ago
Another spicy new idea from the Trump administration: Gold Cards!
The idea, as I understand it, is that global citizens will be able to pay a one time fee of $5 million USD, and enjoy a much shorter and less strenuous vetting process to become U.S. citizens. The gold card will effectively function like a green card that is paid for.
In the hearing they mention they want to use this money to pay down the deficit, which I actually think is a great idea. I'm sure it will filter for much higher quality immigration than our current setup of mostly illegal immigrants, anyway.
I'm sure the left will hate this and see it as privileging the rich. And to be clear, it absolutely is! It's extremely unfair for people who want to immigrate and don't have the funds, will never even possibly have the funds, to pay $5m USD. That being said, I like the idea because it very much singles the U.S. shifting towards wanting immigrants who actually pull their weight, and provide something to the country.
While yes of course not all rich people will be a net benefit to the country, by and large I would have to imagine if they can apy 5 million dollars they will be relatively high quality. Plus, as Trump points out, this will massively incentivize people to move their businesses to the U.S. You're a wealthy founder in China, Europe, or Latin America? Just buy a gold card and move your business over!
Anyway, I know we have a lot of libertarians here so I'm curious for thoughts on this? I was personally quite surprised he went ahead and did it - didn't even know this was on the table.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
5mo ago
As clean and safe and whatever else it may be, there is no way around the price. It consistently ranks among the most costly sources. And budget being the tightest constraint, I cannot imagine it being an important part of the strategy for energy transition - maybe some minor and localized cases, but not more than that.
As another commenter asked, are you calculating the insane and targeted regulatory burdens as part of this price? Most nuclear plants that have gone up have undergone extreme lawfare designed to put them out of business. Without all of that, do you suppose the cost might go down?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
8mo ago
I'll go for a more psychological take, and I'd be curious what @coffee_enjoyer thinks as well.
Generally though I'd say that Trump's personality represents the aggressive masculine behavior that is most repressed in the modern PMC / progressive class. Direct confrontation, bravery to go against the crowd, and immunity to personal attacks and shaming are all extremely destabilizing to the progressive psyche.
There are complicated reasons for this, but the most basic way I can think to put it is that feminism became a strong force because the masculine side of world society went way overboard with WW1 and WW2. Society psychologically needed a balanced and reacted strongly with fear of the masculine, fear of anger, fear of aggression, etc.
When you see something or someone that represents parts of yourself that you repress, it often creates really judgmental or shameful feelings in you. This is sometimes talked about as projection but that's a whole nother complicated thing.
I think on the flip side the reason the Clintons pissed off the Republicans so much is that the demographic that hated them was also repressing what the Clintons represented - namely rich, cosmopolitan, intellectual, and polished coastal elites. But that's a bit more complicated as well.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1yr ago
Has anyone else gone through a period in adult life where you realize you've kind of forgotten how to actually have fun?
I'm not talking about just zoning out to a video game, but joyous laugh-out-loud relaxing fun. For me I feel I've gotten so bogged down with job issues, health issues, and planning for the future that even when I carve out 'free time' I never fully relax and just have fun.
Anyone relate? Or have stories on how they got out of such a mode?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2yr ago
Great comment, reported for quality contribution.
The problem isn't guns, the problem is that there are millions of disaffected people living in a country founded on the idea of individual human rights. That works when the people are hyper-invested in their families and the future that they'll be living in; that doesn't work when everybody is depressed and hates each other.
This is an underrated point. So many times when societal ills come up in rationalist discourse, people hand wave away, are ignorant of, or flat out ignore the fact that at least 1/5 (probably more in actuality) of the US population is depressed or has some mental disorder. Even given that our modern psychiatric framing is largely faulty, this mass wave of disaffectedness means that traditional solutions, things that worked for our forefathers, need rethinking.
Even though past societies had plenty of times of upheaval, they had different ways of fixing things. Revolutions, massive aligned religions, cultural processes and holidays like the Roman Saturnalia which acted as a pressure release valve for hierarchical resentment. We've been increasingly preventing a release of the pressure, and it will only get worse as we continue to do nothing.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2yr ago
Is the whole point of Effective Altruism to be a place for nerds to meet women?
Based on many of the frothing defendants of polyamory on the EA forum - seems like that is a major driver. Check out this comment where a relatively connected EA directly says:
As a poly EA, I'm more likely to bother to show up for things if I think I might get laid. It increases engagement and community cohesion. A group that is a good place to meet interesting opposite gender people is going to have an intrinsic advantage in pulling in casually interested people over one where that is strictly banned.
This dude got a grant for tens of thousands of dollars to write a fantasy book for EA. Go figure.
I have been involved in EA for a while outside of the Bay Area / UK sections, and damn I had no idea the rot went this deep. It's wild to see these poly folks mask off.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2yr ago
Merry Christmas mottizens. Just want to say I’m grateful for all y’all hooligans. They said we couldn’t do it but here we are, survived another move, better than ever.
I hope you all get to spend some quality time with your families this holiday, and for a few minutes are able to let go of your frustrations and worries, and bask in Christmassy happiness.
To those without families nearby, I hope you have friends and loved ones. If you’re all alone reply to this post and I’ll talk to you. I know this is just a forum where we debate the culture war, but I’ve come to see it as a little online home. Good tidings for Christmas and a happy new year.
I'm going to shamelessly steal @Scimitar's post from the Friday Fun thread because I think we need to talk about LLMs in a CW context:
A few months ago OpenAI dropped their API price, from $0.06/1000 tokens for their best model, to $0.02/1000 tokens. This week, the company released their ChatGPT API which uses their "gpt-3.5-turbo" model, apparently the best one yet, for the price of $0.002/1000 tokens. Yes, an order of magnitude cheaper. I don't quite understand the pricing, and OpenAI themselves say: "Because
gpt-3.5-turboperforms at a similar capability totext-davinci-003but at 10% the price per token, we recommendgpt-3.5-turbofor most use cases." In less than a year, the OpenAI models have not only improved, but become 30 times cheaper. What does this mean?https://old.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/11fn0td/the_implications_of_chatgpts_api_cost/
...or about $0.13 per hour. Yes technically it overlooks the fact that OpenAI charge for both input and output tokens, but this is still cheap and the line is trending downwards.
Full time minimum wage is ~$20k/year. GPT-3.5-turbo is 100x cheaper and vastly outperforms the average minimum wage worker at certain tasks. I dunno, this just feels crazy. And no, I wont apologize for AI posting. It is simply the most interesting thing happening right now.
I strongly agree with @Scimitar, this is the most interesting thing happening right now. If you haven't been following AI/LLM progress the last month, it has been blazingly fast. I've spent a lot of time in AI doomer circles so I have had a layer of cynicism around people talking about the Singularity, but I'll be damned if I'm not started to feel a bit uncomfortable that they may have been right.
The CW implications seem endless - low skill jobs will be automated, but which tribe first? Will HR admins who spend all day writing two emails be the first to go? Fast food cashiers who are already on their way out through self ordering consoles?
Which jobs will be the last to go? The last-mile problem seems pretty bad for legal and medical professionals (i.e. if an LLM makes up an answer it could be very bad) but theoretically we could use them to generate copy or ideas then go through a final check by a professional.
Outside of employment, what will this do to human relations? I've already seen some (admittedly highly autistic) people online saying that talking to ChatGPT is more satisfying than talking to humans. Will the NEET apocalypse turn into overdrive? Will the next generation even interact with other humans, or will people become individualized entirely and surround themselves with digital avatars?
Perhaps I'm being a bit too optimistic on the acceleration, but I can't help but feel that we are truly on the cusp of a massive realignment of technology and society. What are your thoughts on AI?
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